Friday, September 23, 2011

The Tzaddik is surprised

First the Tzaddik was surprised to meet someone else. But then he meets another. And another.

There are innumerable members of the scattered tribes wandering the plains and highlands, meeting and parting at ramshackle roadside camps, each one swearing in the broken Hebrew they pick up from the wireless they hadn’t got nothing to do with it. No sirree. One of these days he might just give up trying to talk to them all together.

Quietly he unpacks the wine and jerky he bartered for with a toothless man in a dog skin coat and sighs. Yeah. He knows he won't. Tonight he eats and drinks on a rocky ledge from which he has full view of the tower on the horizon. The ruins are still smoking after all these centuries. There is still the occasional rumble of collapsing masonry.

It wasn’t a fair fight, no. But there are those who say a rock to the back of the skull is kindness nowadays, when the winds won’t stop. The bastard had only six coppers on him anyway.